Carrier Ethernet: steadily growing

Published: 2013-05-07

Insight

Carrier Ethernet has been much talked about in recent years, in particular thanks to the MEF (Metro Ethernet Forum). Many industry analysts have touted carrier Ethernet as a major source of growth for carriers and as basically meaning the end of traditional technologies such as PDH (Plesiochronous Digital Hierarchy: E1/E3 – T1/T3 in the US), SDH (Synchronous Digital Hierarchy – SONET in the US) and ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) or Frame Relay (FR). But indeed, we will argue that the real growth for carriers may remain very modest as most carrier Ethernet growth is simply offsetting SDH (for the rest of the article SDH will refer to PDH and SDH) and ATM/FR decline or coming from some limited replacement of layer 3 IP VPN.

This article is based on a recent InfoCom study looking at market drivers and obstacles in general for carrier Ethernet while analysing in more details the current landscape in Germany as regards carrier Ethernet providers and offers and finally providing a market sizing and forecast for Germany.